hood, and the driver has a big sieve for a skull. He

  knows nothing, says nothing, remembers nothing."

  Marden led the way to the dark grey Lincoln with

  shielded windows. @tavers caught a glimpse through

  18

  Mai-tin Caidin

  reached the limo the door close to them sprang open.

  Stavers nodded approvingly and started inside. An enor-

  mous hand held him back. The move was automatic.

  Marden leaned inside to check out the interior and to

  be certain the same driver was behind the wheel. He

  stepped back and nodded. "Okay."

  "Mother's little helper," Stavers remarked as he set-

  tled back in his seat. "How come this is waiting like

  this?"

  "The way you play alley pool, Doug," Marden said,

  "I figured we might need to take a very quick powder."

  Stavers closed his eyes. "Wake me up when we hit

  the terminal."

  Marden nodded to the driver. "LaGuardia Marine,"

  he said. "Use the Customs gate. And call ahead."

  "Yes, sir. "

  Damned good man. Marden sat erect in his seat

  alongside Doug Stavers. His eyes missed nothing, scan-

  ning the roads before them, behind them, the cars and

  trucks on each side as they passed other vehicles or

  were passed.

  Occasionally he looked directly at Doug Stavers. I

  know how that man in the alley felt before he blew

  himself to Kingdom Come. I know only too well how he

  felt. I just don't know how to tell Doug I love him too.

  More than life itself. He doesn't know I'd die for him,

  He was wrong. Stavers knew.

  Chapter 2

  "Remove your clothes, please."

  The woman who spoke these words so casually to

  Doug Stavers leaned back in her executive chair, per-

  fect legs crossed perfectly. For the moment he studied

  her. What a goddamned combination she made. She

  was about as perfect a woman-physically-as he'd ever

  known, and in his time Doug Stavers had been blessed

  with a profusion of beauties of a dozen races and nation-

  alities. His long studied sweep of Dr. Rebecca Weinstein

  only reinforced his judgment of her physical attributes.

  Beauty, as Stavers knew from deep intimacy to philo-

  sophical judgment, came in many forms and sizes. There

  didn't exist and there had never existed the most beau-

  tiful woman. The concept was ridiculous and Stavers

  silently thanked the gods who decreed that beautv carne

  light and dark and a dozen shapes in between, that

  breasts and legs and puNs and neckline and nose and

  the whole damned package went sour almost instantly

  when the rich or pliant voice was lacking, when the

  smile proved lackluster or revealing of a dim and shad-

  owy wallow behind the pearly teeth. And eyes@ ah, the

  woman vdthout eyes alive and daring and challenging

  and mysterious, well, forget her, because something

  very special was left out of the package if the eyes could

  not speak for the mind. You didn't need words to

  communicate; you could just about verbalize with eyes

  and looks and a tug at the corner of the mouth.

  Rebecca Weinstein w&,, almost a twin sister-facially

  and physically-to a Hollywood actresswho often graced

  20

  Martin Caidin

  both theater screens and the electronic box at horne

  with looks that nailed male viewers to their seats. Kelly

  LeBrock was the actress, and no small part of her

  dazzling attraction was voice and accent. Rebecca

  Weinstein had everything that made LeBrock a global

  male fantasy, and more. Dr. Weinstein spoke with that

  crisp and beautiful annunciation of the British. There

  wasn't much doubt, however, that the subjects she

  spoke of were very different,

  Rebecca Weinstein was a gifted and utterly brilliant

  medical doctor and surgeon. Thirty-two years old, she

  looked the perfect twenty-six years of age. Stavers once

  again swept his eyes across her stunning figure, all the

  more provocative as her full breasts pushed hard against

  the crisp white uniform. She was his doctor. He chewed

  on that a moment as he began to undress. His doctor.

  His doctor.

  But not his woman. He offered himself the relief of a

  momentary grimace; from the sudden change in look on

  her face he knew she had caught the facial expression.

  Physically she didn't move. Her eyes darted about his

  b d like a scalpel, an extension of her visual observa-

  0 y n .

  tion that held a tantalizing almost-physical sensation to

  her optical survey of himself.

  If nothing else, Doug Stavers was blessed with ani-

  mal instincts of survival. A lifetime of surviving lethal

  situations had honed this feeling within him to obsidian-

  bladed sharpness. He felt a slight prickling of the hairs

  along the base of his neck. She did this to him. This

  stunning woman, this doctor, without even being aware

  of what was happening, was able to look directly at him

  as if sizing up a zreat slab of frozen meat swinging from

  a butcher's hooC It brought him almost to the point of

  being unnerved by the sensation. He had the feeling

  that beneath all her obvious physical and cerebral abili-

  ties, staggering enough by themselves, lay another source

  of strength, or power. He didn't know, and-

  She cut short his introspection as her eyes continued

  their search for physical injury. When she failed to

  discern visible damage, she voiced norynal concern in

  A- - @ I. I P I -

  DARK MESSIAH

  21

  "Did you sustain injury?" she asked. Her words were

  so clinical they smelled hospital.

  He stopped, awkward, his trousers half removed.

  "Do you mean was I hurt?" He grinned crookedly@

  "Like stabbed, punched, kicked, shot?"

  He never reached her.

  "Yes. 11

  He shook his head. "Not from them. To them." He

  shrugged, draping his pants across a chair and starting

  to remove his shorts.

  "Them," she repeated. "Whoever they are."

  "Whatever is more like it," he countered. "Scum.

  Unimportant. "

  "You had physical contact?"

  "Yes. 11

  "You were alley-catting?"

  "How the hell did you know?"

  "You were alley-catting," she said to confirm aloud

  her judgment, "in that filth beyond filth. A jungle

  epidemic couldn't touch this sleaze '"

  "Jesus, woman, I didn't wallow in it."

  "But you touched, breathed, inhaled, carried it on

  your shoes, your -clothes, your . your skin."

  "But-"

  "You smell," she went on relentlessly, and he knew she

  also enjoyed his discomfiture. "You reek; you-" she

  took a shuddering breath " --stink of a thousand foul odors."

  "All that?" he mocked her, smiling.

  She remained unfazed. "You've been exposed to bac-

  terial and viral assaults that medical science can't even

  identifv," she reeled off. "You've permitted a scrape or)

  the s4eof your right hand-"

  He lifted his hand, astonished to see llow accurate

  her penetrating glance had been.

  "-to expose you, as well," she drilled at h 'rp, "to

  herpes, syphilis, unidentified venereal rot, pneumonic

  and tuberculosic infection, AIDS--"

  "You forgot the clap."

  "That was coming," she snapped.

  "Goddairmit, Weinstein!" he shouted, "I Gidn't fuck

  22

  Mar-tin Caidin

  "Please," she protested in gentle rebuke, a smile

  tugging at the corner of her mouth, reminding him

  again of those beautiful lips. "Even I would not even

  consider such idiotic self-abuse on your part. Besides,

  you're fully aware of everything I've said. And more,"

  she added tartly.

  He stood naked before her, not fully aware of the

  staggering effect be produced within Dr. Rebecca

  Weinstein. Impassive to his masculinity, adhering rig-

  idly to her position as his doctor-ah, bow well she

  concealed her own reactions to this magnificent male

  creature. She could, and she did, but it required no

  more than a long moment, her study masked clinically,

  her memory serving her as well, to capture in her mind

  the entire package of this man. Hers was a demanding

  dichotomy of observation. She saw Doug Stavers as a

  edical doctor and she saw Doug Stavers as an individ-

  ual and she longed for him as a man, and would have

  bitten through her tongue before admitting to the al-

  most lustful yearning for him. First and foremost and

  last she was and must be what he needed from her: her

  medical observations, treatment, anticipation of prob-

  lems, and as swiftly as possible a cure or fix for what-

  ever failed this man

  Rebecca Weinstein was a surgeon. Observing the

  naked male body, moving of its own volition or stilled

  forever without life, studying it in its entirety or exarn-

  ming various dissected parts; all was professional to her.

  There was no nudity or nakedness on the surgeon's

  table or even in the privacy of an examining room, and

  so Rebecca Weinstein found all the more baffling and

  frustrating her division of professional and a woman

  who would willingly act in wild sin, if only she could

  achieve the latter without compromising ihe former.

  Which she couldn't do, and she clung grimly to her

  professional objectivity, no matter how painful the lie.

  But there was an objective study to fascinate her

  when Doug Stavers eased into her care. Standing be-

  fore her, she could accept him in physical bulk for what

  he was: thick-bewn and yet with long, flowing and

  nnu7Prfii1 miic-1,f,- QJ_ J__ @1_ _-_ - _f @L - __ -

  DARK MESSIAH

  23

  fectly honed human machine arid Doug Stavers was one

  of its finest examples. He was a cerebral wonder and a

  vicious killer in the animal world, especially since that

  time when she had come to embrace his definition of

  bipedal human beings as prey equal to any four-footed

  creature.

  Her gaze passed with clinical measure across his

  muscle-ribbed stomach, scarred and browned, flowing

  into thick pubic hair and a heavy, pendulous penis. No

  more than a fleeting instant of pause would she permit

  herself unless medical care demanded further attention;

  her eyes flicked from one wrist to the other. The first

  time she saw the blue tint to his wrists had been

  perplexing to her, and then she remembered. The mas-

  ters of the martial arts. The best of the men who waged

  hand-to-hand combat. The blue wrists of metal-hard

  bone and tendon and sinew and muscle, all to transform

  the sides of his hands into rock-hard boards. A blow

  from his hand could crack a man's skull as easily as he

  might smash his hand into a melon.

  He had no upper stomach to speak of. Ribbed and

  patterned muscle as if carved from dark autumn mar-

  ble. The Greeks and the Romans built statues to men

  like this, she museo, This man would rule the gladia-

  tors. Only lie's deadlier. He's the true predator. She

  took a deep breath. So why am I not fearful of him? No

  answer met her unspoken question.

  Stavers lifted his arms and held them high to each

  side and began a slow turn, unbidden, but anticipating

  her request. Muscled ribs. buttocks like a water bnf-

  falo, a back of piano-wire strung lightly in bunched

  mass. A neck of corded muscle, He moved -as if to

  music. Heflowed. She forced herself back to reality, to

  those first moments when she met in private with Skip

  Marden so that Marden might reveal to her whatever

  she might require to best serve Doug Stavers.

  Marden held a bottle of vodka in a hand so huge the

  bottle seemed a toy. She knew Marden's appetite for

  alcohol and his strange resistance to its effect, He could

  drink pure ethyl alcohol and with sudden concentration

  @i_ _4-4c 1,;, -;-A --1 1-l" "-1 f ..... f;,m

  24

  Martin Caidin

  as if he'd never taken a drink in his life. Yet the tales of

  his great drunken bouts in the bars of Arizona and back

  Indian country were as legendary as anything befitting

  Paul Runyan.

  I don't like talking about him," he told Dr. Weinstein.

  "Why?" she asked delicately.

  "Lot of women ask questions about that man."

  "I'm not here as a woman. "

  "You sure as hell are a lot of woman!"

  11 1 repeat, I'm here as-"

  -1 know, I know," he interrupted, gesturing with the

  bottle, taking a huge swallow before continuing. "You're

  his sawbones. The medical wonder. Hell, Doc, I know

  your dossier backwards and forwards."

  Her eyes seemed to laugh. "Then why don't you

  trust me?" she queried.

  "S ay a doctor," he rebuked her. "Don't be an

  asshole. "

  "I don't understand," she chided him, smiling.

  "Lady, just do not bullshit me. Not now, not ever,"

  he warned. His eyes went dark. Eyes buried in the

  skull of a great coiled python. "And don't patronize me.

  You know goddamned well we trust you. If I didnt

  trust you, you'd have been dogmeat-literally-lorig

  before now." His eyes stripped her. "And that would

  have been a shame."

  She shifted uncomfortably. "Then I apologize. I did

  not intend to act, as you say, like an asshole or to

  bullshit you. I need information--data--on Mr. Stavers,

  and my questions are intended to permit me to function

  in the best manner possible for his well-being."

  "Apology accepted. That's also a hell of a speech."

  "Then speak up!" she snapped.

  "You do have fangs," he said in appreciation, rising

  respect clear in his face. "Itty-bitty fangs, but," he

  shrugged, "you got to start somewhere."

  "Jesus Christ," she said, exasperated, -I'd been told

  you were a man of a few words."

  "You turn me on, Doc."

  "Then turn off your seminal flow, Mister Marden."

  14P 1Ancyh,,(] a J.- -t-- A---- -t -

  DARK MESSIAH

  25

  room. "Not in the way you took that. You turn me on as

  a real people."

  She blushed. She was stunned with her reaction.

  "Please," she said weakly.

  , grasping for a clue, a start.

  "His attitude; tell me about his attitude toward life. I

  know much of his background, I mean, the records are

  there. He's fought in wars, large and small, through

  half the world. He has a reputation as a destroyer, a

  man who always gets what he wants. I don't understand

  that strange harness he wears. It's a taboo subject. No

  one will talk about it." She saw the eyes darken again

  and she held up a hand to stop any angry reaction from

  Marden. "I'm not asking you about that. I'll ask him.

  But what makes him so deadly? So special?"

  Marden smiled, a thin slash across his powerful, bat-

  tered face. "Contempt," he said, and as he became

  serious about Doug Stavers, his tone, his entire demea-

  nor changed, as if he were talking about someone beyond

  normal, almost supernatural.

  "Contempt?" she echoed. She paused only a mo-

  ment. "For @Ahat?-

  "Everything." Marden put aside the bottle. Rebecca

  Weinstein knew she'd been right in her assessment of

  this man. He had become very serious. A sudden thought

  chilled her. "Mr. Marden, if I-"

  "Skip," he slid easily between her words, -You and 1,

  Doc, we're gonna be just like Siamese twins where

  Doug Stavers is concerned, so let's cut out all the

  in-betweens, You just accept that I'm part of V,ou and

  you I re part of me and rhat we are going to be the best

  damned gestalt there ever was."

  Marden bedeviled her. Massive brute and killer that

  he was, openly contemptuous himself of women, or just

  about anything else, she had quickly discerned, he still

  thought with a brain of great and diverse capability.

  Not that he'd simply uttered gestalt; the phrase held

  deep and long-standing meaning to him, and he'd ac-

  cepted that she also would catch all its implications.

  That took swift and multiple channel reasoning and that

  arose only from long-standing and accomplished disci-

  nlin@ nitfinnicl hPrcAf nfit to t-ven remntelv indge

  26

  Martin Caidin

  this towering book before her by its drastically mislead-

  ing cover. Then she forced all thoughts of Marden from

  her mind to concentrate on her purpose for this exchange.

 

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